Some Early Pictures and Memories of my Mother

Whenever I think about my mother, Lois Lawrence Farrow, I think of "love." She was not a kissy, huggy person, except with the little ones, but her love for her family and others radiated through her actions, demeanor, and speech. I look forward to when I can enjoy her loving companionship again.

Mom never had very good health, so bringing children into the world put her somewhat at risk. This first picture is of her holding Evelyn.

It was five years before their second daughter, LaRae was born.
Then, six years later I came along.Probably my earliest memory of my mother is of her trying a little pair of shoes on me. They didn't fit, and she said she would have to take them back to the store and exchange them. I remember my disappointment that I couldn't keep them. I remember being three. Actually, I remember my third birthday, but it is with my two sisters in the picture, not Mom. They were helping me hold up three fingers, then I remember that we were getting ready to go up to our Grandma's house. This next picture is of the three of us girls, probably when I was about three.Also when I was three, I had my tonsils out. I remember my mom coaxing me to eat some ice cream. A year or so later, Mom got sick. I never understood exactly what was going on, but they called it a nervous breakdown. I guess that means that she went through a bad time with depression. For a period of time LaRae and I stayed up at Grandma Lawrence's. I believe Evelyn missed a lot of school that year, staying home to help our mother. Her recovery took quite a while.

At one point my dad took her to Salt Lake to see a doctor up there. After a day of tests and consultation, they went back to the hotel for the night. My mom had a wonderful experience after hours of pleading to get well. A voice came to her promising that she would fully recover. My dad said she woke him up. Her face was radiant, and she said she was well and wanted to go home - right then. He talked her into waiting until morning. By then she was unwell again, but she was comforted that eventually she would be all right. The voice and assurance came to her one other time when she was at a low point. Gradually she did recover. I remember when she started feeling well enough to have me home for a while each day, Grandma would walk with me down the street as far as the Post Office at Otto Dalley's where she helped me cross the street. Then she would watch while I went on down the street to home. Mom would be sitting in the sunshine at the kitchen door waiting for me.

She was quite artistic. In high school she did some watercolor paintings that I still have (somewhere). Thinking of her artistic ability, her brother, Alma, bought her some clay to work with during her recovery. I remember that she made some clay plaques with mountain scenes on them, and she put them in the oven to dry and harden.

By the summer that I was five she was feeling pretty much herself again. I remember that we went to San Diego with her brother, Boyd, and his family for a week or two. Coming home we rode the Greyhound bus. I remember embarrassing her when I saw my first black man and kept asking her questions about him. I also remember that we stopped in Las Vegas for something to eat. I wanted ice cream, and she insisted that I have a glass of milk. Of course I ate the ice cream first then tried to drink the "warm" milk afterwards. Ever since then I've disliked milk!

I remember many little things about my mother during my elementary school years, but nothing specific as far as stories go. She was always interested in my school progress and went to all the parent/teacher conferences. She probably laid it on a little thick in telling me how good my teachers said I was doing, but it boosted my confidence in my ability to achieve in school. She saw to it that my sisters and I took piano lessons, and that we went to them prepared each week. It took all sorts of methods of pursuasion to get me to practice, but I am grateful to her that she didn't give up on me.

She was a wonderful seamstress, having learned the art from her mother. My dad worked hard to support the family, but we never had much money for extras. Mom made all the clothes for herself and her girls, including winter coats, which was helpful to their slender budget. She always raised a large garden and bottled what vegs she could. Every summer peddlars from Washington County would come through Summit with their peaches, pears, etc. She always bought bushels of fruit to put up. They kept chickens and pigs, and for quite a while had a milk cow. She fed them, gathered eggs, etc., but I don't remember that she ever had to milk the cow. I do remember, though, that she made butter from the cream. She also made her own laundry soap for many years. It was quite a process, using rendered animal fat and lye, and other ingredients. It took her most of a day, cooking it in a large metal tub over a fire outside, then pouring it out into shallow containers to cool, then finally cutting it into square bars when it was set. She did that clear until she got her first automatic washing machine the year Chad was born. Until then she washed the old "conventional way" with a ringer washer and a separate tub of water to rinse in.

I remember those times when I was sick with red measles, chicken pox, mumps, etc., besides colds and flu. She was always such a tender, concerned "nurse." When I was small and sick, she would put two kitchen chairs together and make a bed for me in the kitchen where she could keep me close by. If I was lying on the couch, she would bring me something to eat in there instead of making me come to the table to eat. She would do anything she could to make me more comfortable. I remember her rubbing my chest with Vicks then putting a warm piece of flannel over it to help loosen up the cough.

When I got into my teens my mom and I became best of friends. From the age of twelve, I was the only daughter still at home, so we were together a lot. When I was in high school my dad worked in Nevada part of each year, so during that time we were the only ones home. The picture below was taken when I was in about eighth grade.

Mom was always very attentive to her parents. During Grandma's final years Mom took a meal in to her at least once a day (Grandpa would rather take care of his own simple fare). Every evening she would go visit them for an hour or so, and very often I would go with her. When Grandma got to where she couldn't bathe herself, my mom took care of that, and she washed and curled her hair every Saturday so Grandma would look nice to go to the Church meetings.

It was my mother's wish that I not get married as young as she and my sisters had, and that I get a college education. So she was a little apprehensive when a certain returned missionary started calling on me regularly. She cried a bit when we became engaged, but she liked Val and was supportive of our plans to marry. She became even more "supportive" when Val had to return me home for a year and a half while he got his military training and spent a year in Viet Nam. Chad was born during that time, so she helped me through a miserable pregnancy and the birth and first nine months of Chad's life. I say "she," but my dad was in on it, too. They loved little Chad just like he was their own.

It was an exciting day for me when Val finally came home from the war. Out of our first year and a half of marriage we had only been together fifty-five days, all totaled. He was to be stationed at Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, to finish his enlistment. I know it about broke my mom and dad's hearts to have me take Chad away to Texas, but they were happy for us to finally be able to be together. The picture below was taken just before we left. I was very blessed to have such good, loving parents.I must say how my mother loved the Gospel of Jesus Christ. She had a very strong testimony, and a fervent love for the Lord. She was always active in the Church and served in many callings. She was acclaimed in the Summit Ward as a wonderful teacher. For years she taught teenaged Sunday School classes - except for the group my age. I remember her best as a Relief Society teacher. Her lessons were always interesting and very well prepared. At the time of her death she was on the Stake Relief Society Board.

A couple of little stories I'll tell on her. She was always very careful of her appearance whenever she went in public. She was refined and proper, and never tried to draw attention to herself. She was also easily embarrassed but had a sense of humor when the joke was on her. One Sunday after Sacrament Meeting, we were walking out to the car when a friend of mine whispered in my ear, "Does your mother know she is wearing a black shoe and a white shoe." I looked down, and sure enough, she was. When I showed her, I thought she was going to die. She looked so stricken at first - then she started to laugh. The tears just rolled down her cheeks from laughing when we got home. She had slipped her shoes off between Sunday School and Sacrament Meeting (in those days before the block meetings). When she slipped her feet back into them, she didn't realize there was more than one pair of shoes there waiting for her.

Another time that got her laughing like that, after the "shock," was on a July 4th picnic. She had put together a nice lunch, and the family, including Grandma Lawrence, had set out to find a nice picnic spot up in the mountains. We drove around for what seemed like forever looking for just the right spot to spread out a couple of quilts to eat our picnic lunch on. (It was in the days before there were specific picnic areas set up with tables, etc.) Finally they found the perfect place. We all piled out of the car while my dad opened the trunk to get everything out. To his surprise, the only thing he found was a lonely watermelon in there! It went from total shock and not being funny at all to where my mother and grandmother were just rolling with laughter. We were pretty hungry by the time we got back to Summit and found our picnic lunch still sitting on the kitchen table.

More about my Mom

I've always had to smile whenever I've looked at the picture of my mom and dad as they were leaving our house to start back home to Utah. That grand piece of luggage my dad is carrying was my doll suitcase from when I was a little girl.

The pictures above were taken when my parents came to Texas to visit us. We toured around a little to show them the sights. The helicopter is the one Val was in charge of at Ft. Sam Houston. It was a Huey like he worked on in Viet Nam. It was used to transport injured people to the Brookes Army Hospital there on post.

Mom and Dad came to Texas twice during the sixteen months we lived there. The first time was for Christmas 1969, then again the following spring.

The above picture was taken in 1971 when were were living in Inglewood, California. My parents made several trips to see us, always wanting to see their little grandsons. My mother is holding Travis.

In the summer of 1971 Val and I bought a small house that was just across the street from my mom and dad. I really enjoyed the time we lived there before we moved to St. George in 1974. After having lived far away from family for several years it was so nice to be able to look out our kitchen window and see my parents' house, and be able to visit with them whenever I wanted. Our little boys loved to go there. My mom always had something on hand for a treat that children love - ice cream and cones, home-made cookies, etc.

They probably got more opportunities to tend the boys than they should have, but they were always willing whenever I asked. Our little boys felt very much at home there, knowing they were loved and cherished by Grandma and Grandpa. The following picture was taken Christmas morning 1973. My mom is holding little Aaron.The summer of 1974 was not a very happy one for my mother. Val had accepted a job with SkyWest Airlines in St. George, so we had a for sale sign posted in our front yard. Although she didn't say a whole lot about it, Mom dreaded the thought of us moving away. Besides that, she was having problems with a blood clot in her leg. Being a person who hardly ever sat down during the day, it was very annoying to her that she had to spend a lot of time either lying down or sitting with her leg up. Finally, the clot seemed to have dissolved by the first week in August, so she and my dad traveled to St. George on Friday to see us. We took them out to Bloomington to see where we were going to build.

They invited Chad to go home with them, and of course he was willing. I agreed to go pick him up the following Thursday. It was a nice day - we had a good visit and enjoyed being together. Before I left Mom put her arms around me and told me she loved me. We were not a verbally or physically demonstrative family, even though the ties of love were strong and sweet. I was so surprised at the gesture that I couldn't even reciprocate. I've always wished I had, because it was to be my final opportunity. My dad called the following Tuesday morning to tell me my mother had just passed away. The blood clot we thought had dissolved had apparently only moved, and we assume that was what took her.

Some pictures and memories of my father

This is my dad, John Mathew Farrow, always known as Jack, with his three daughters. He is holding me, LaRae is in front of him, and Evelyn is at his right side. He never had any sons, but he loved his girls and was proud of us. LaRae was his little side-kick when she was in elementary school, and he called her Charlie.

I have a few early memories of him, and most of them are happy ones. He could be stern when I didn't obey, but mostly he was friendly and easy to be around. He had a fun sense of humor and could be a tease at times. I remember how he would talk me out of a pout by saying he could see my mouth starting to turn up at the corners. It wouldn't be long before I was giggling.

Sometimes when he had to be away from home for a few days he would bring me a surprise. We had an old record player that played 78 rpm records, and he brought me several with stories and songs on them. I remember one that had the story of David and Goliath on it, and some songs that went with it. Another had a song about the "Big Rock Candy Mountain," and I remember him singing along with it. One year when pogo sticks were popular with all the kids, he took me into a store and bought me one while Mom was shopping for groceries. That was a "big deal!"

He had an old red tractor when I was small, and as soon as he turned out of the field lane to come down the street towards home, I would hear the peculiar sound of it and know he was on his way. I would run out front, across the ditch, and wait for him. He would stop and help me up onto the seat in front of him and let me drive it with him down into the back yard.
I rememeber one Sunday afternoon I came home from Church all feverish and feeling awful. It was especially sad for me because Evelyn and Con came with their little kids, and I had to stay away from them. My dad felt bad for me missing out, so he came and spent some time with me in the bedroom so I wouldn't feel so left out. It turned out that I had the mumps! There was a small panic for a while, because he had never had them. Fortunately, he didn't get them from me.


I was probably in about eighth grade when the above two pictures were taken. My dad didn't have much formal education - he only completed eighth grade, himself. But he was intelligent and continued to learn much on his own. He was especially good at math and could put it to use in practical matters to figure out anything he needed. It seemed like he was always "figuring" something, and he filled MANY little notebooks and pieces of paper with numbers to figure costs, weights, measures, profits, etc., anything having to do with whatever occupation he was engaged in at the time. He mostly farmed during my growing-up years, but he also did carpentry and some mining. We never had alot of money, but we had a comfortable home and were never in need of anything.

I don't have a lot of memories of him spending time with me, one on one. I remember some daddy-daughter dates in Primary that he took me to, and one when I was in high school. I remember at the high school one, we danced, and that was probably the only time he ever danced with me. He didn't have much time to call his own, as farming is very demanding. But there were times he took us on picnics, and I remember him taking me fishing a couple of times. One time was at the dam up at the Summit creek, and I caught five fish that evening.

He was very supportive in me taking piano lessons for ten years. He loved it when LaRae and I practiced the piano, and he was always quick to pick it up if we were getting our timing wrong. When our playing got far enough along, he would often sit and strum his guitar along with our music.

My dad was very musical. He had a beautiful tenor voice, and he played the guitar. His lungs were damaged from years of gold-mining when he was young, so singing became hard for him. By the time I came along (and can remember him), he didn't do much singing, but he loved to strum his guitar whenever he was sitting to rest or watch TV. I made the guitar cake for him for his birthday one year, probably about his 65th. We were living in Summit, just across the street from my parents at the time.

This was taken when we were living in San Antonio, Texas. It was a long trip from Summit, but my dad was such a "softie" over little Chad, that he and my mom came to visit us twice in the year and a half that we lived there.

This picture was taken when we lived in Inglewood, California. He and my mom came to California several times to visit us.

This is the latest picture I have of my mother and dad together. It was taken just several weeks before my mother died August 13, 1974. She was 57 and he was 67 at that time.

He continued to live in their house in Summit for several months, but in November of that year he sold the house and moved to live with us in St. George where the winters were milder and he could breathe more easily. We were living in an apartment at that time but soon our house in Bloomington was finished, and he moved there with us.

My dad loved his grandchildren, and he was always patient with them and all their noise. I was expecting Kendall when he came to live with us. I was sick with the pregnancy, and he was very helpful to me. He always kept his stuff picked up, never left anything lying around the house. He made his bed every morning and kept his bedroom cleaned up. He was visiting my sister Evelyn in Salt Lake when Kendall was born. I called to let them know about the baby, and the next day I could hear someone in the hall outside my hospital room proudly saying "That tiny little baby with all that black hair is my grandson." (My room was right by the nursery window.) He had left Evelyn's to be there when I got home from the hospital, so he could help me. He was a wonderful father and grandfather.

Here are a few other memories:

When I was very young my dad would sometimes let me drive the car down the field road in the evenings when he went back down to the farm to turn off the water pumps. My mom and I would go along for the ride, and he would move over and let me sit in the driver's seat. The steering wheel had an outer wheel or ring, a middle ring, then the hub in the center. I was so short that I had to look out over the dashboard between the middle and outer rings to see the road. Once in a while, after turning off the pumps, instead of going right home, we would take the field roads and go on over to Parowan for an ice cream cone. That was a special treat.

A few weeks before I was to be baptized, an ornery cow chased him into a fence and messed up his leg pretty bad. It was quite a while before he regained his strength in it. I worried whether or not he could baptize me, and I remember asking if he thought his "gimpy leg" would let me down. He laughed alot about about what I'd said, but I didn't think it was so funny.

He had a bad injury to his eye just before Christmas that same year. He and his brother Lyle were cutting cedar posts. A limb that had been pinned underneath a fallen tree broke free and flipped him in the eye. It popped his eyeball open, letting much of the fluid run out. Lyle rushed him to the doctor in Cedar, but nothing could be done there. Arrangements were made to admit him at St. Mark's Hospital in Salt Lake. Lyle drove him and Mom to Salt Lake as fast as he could after calling the Highway Patrol and alerting them that they had an emergency. They made it in three hours and forty-five minutes, which was very fast on old Highway 91 back in those days. He had eight stitches put into his eyeball and had to lie flat on his back for two weeks. He was completely blindfolded for a week, then on Christmas Day his good eye was uncovered. I remember visiting him in the hospital on Christmas. Evelyn and Con, who were living in Salt Lake, came to Summit and got LaRae and me. We had been staying with Grandma Lawrence. They didn't give him much hope that he would ever see out of that eye, but he eventually regained fairly good sight in it. He said that without his glasses everything looked like it was on a slant.

Dad was not active in the Church when I was real little, but when I was elementary age he accepted a calling to be in the Sunday School Superintendency. From then on he never missed his meetings, and he gradually developed a very firm testimony of the Gospel through much study and prayer. He was one of the most honest people I have ever known. I loved my dad very much (still do) and I look forward to being with him again.

Grandma Lawrence

My Grandma Lawrence, Eliza Ellen, was known as "Aunt Ella." The first picture is her with my oldest sister, Evelyn. I just love how she is holding Evelyn's little dress down. The second picture is her with my mother. Grandma was probably nearing 80 by then.

Grandma's house seemed about as much like "home" as our own house did because I spent so much happy time there. She was a kind, gentle grandma, and although she kept busy all day she often found time to do special things with me. She was my first piano teacher. I remember sitting on the round piano stool with my legs dangling while she found a box or something for me to put my feet on. Sometimes she would play Chinese Checkers with me on a big old Chinese Checkers board and an assortment of marbles.

When I was three or four my mother had a lengthy sick spell, and my sister LaRae and I stayed at Grandma's for a while. The house didn't have any heat in the bedrooms, so in the winter the beds were piled high with mostly homemade quilts, and every night Grandma would fill rubber hot water bottles with hot water from the big tea kettle (she didn't drink tea) she kept on the cook stove all the time. She would tuck us in bed with a water bottle at our feet. LaRae slept with her, and I slept with my Uncle Alma. LaRae didn't especially like the arrangement because Grandma snored! (Grandma and Uncle Alma probably didn't like it much, either, but they made us feel comfortable and welcome.)

Grandma was a good cook, and she did it all on the old cook stove. She never wanted an electric range, not even in the summer when there always had to be a fire in the stove for cooking and baking. One thing I especially liked was when she cooked new potatoes, carrots, and peas from the garden, and combined them with a white sauce. She made all their breads and rolls, and she usually had cookies in the cookie "basket." She would make the dough and spread it in the bottom of large cake pans. When it was baked and cool she would cut it into squares. Usually she put raisins in it, but sometimes she had chocolate chips, which was a special treat. I loved it when she would cut thick slices of bread, cover them with cheese, and put them in the oven to melt the cheese and toast the bread.

She always had a project going. Her favorite was making patchwork quilts. She could turn a sack full of cloth scraps into beautiful works of art. She also crocheted rag rugs. She would cut long strips of cloth and sew them together, then wind it into big balls like yarn. She had a big wooden crochet hook that she used to make the rugs with. She was an expert semstress, and she did alot of clothing alterations for customers from Cedar as well as made new clothes. I remember her sitting at the old treadle sewing machine hour after hour, then later at a new machine that had a lever she could press with her knee to make it sew.

As far back as I can remember Grandma walked with a heavy limp. Because she never complained or talked about her condition, I don't really know what it was, but I assume it was arthritis in her hip or a worn out hip joint. The last few years of her life she couldn't walk at all, but I never thought of her as "crippled," because she was so alive in every other way. She even took up oil painting when whe was 80, and she won several blue ribbons for her paintings at the Iron Co. Fair.

She and Grandpa raised six children, three boys and three girls. They were interested in and proud of all their children and grandchildren. Grandma was a refined and deeply religious woman, and she set a good example for her family. I will be glad to be with her again some day.

This is my Grandpa Wilford Lawrence holding Chad. Grandpa loved children, and they responded to his love by eagerly going to him even when they didn't know him.

Grandpa was a nature-lover. He loved learning about how mountains and valleys were formed, and he loved talking about it. He loved rocks. His yard was full of all kinds of beautiful and interesting rocks that he collected as he rambled around the hills in his old pickup, and he knew what they all were and how they came to be. He especially loved birds, and he built birdhouses and bird feeders to invite them to live in his yard.

He did many kind things for me. I remember things like one year I had a school assignment to make a rock collection. Grandpa helped me put it together and provided a display box for me to take it in. We lined the bottom with a piece of quilt batting, then put a cardboard frame over it that provided a window for each rock and a place to write what kind of rock it was. He knew how much I wanted a desk of my own. He found one that had been thrown away. He took it home, cleaned and fixed it, sanded, stained, and varnished it, then brought it to our house for me. When I was quite small he found a little discarded bike and gave it to my dad to fix for me. One summer he took me out pop bottle hunting several time to get a little money for me. We picked up bottles that people had thrown out of their car windows along the highway, then he traded them in for cash and gave it to me. He always had time to chat with me or give me a ride down the street to my house when I didn't want to walk.

I loved my grandpa, and I will be happy to see him again.